As a culture, we tend to cherish the new. We prize the “overnight success”, the gleaming promise offered by fresh talent and untarnished creativity.

In art, this tendency is compounded by the centuries-old stereotype of great artists having a predestined pathway. As far back as the Greeks, stories have been told of the child prodigy whose innate abilities were recognised in juvenescence. The flare of youthful achievement has always been irresistible.

Unfortunately, these cultural caricatures have the effect of persuading some people that, when it comes to creativity, they may have missed the boat.

But this is nonsense.

When you delve into the lives of creatives from history and today, a clear pattern emerges: many artists achieve success only after the dawn and dusk of youth, proving that creative success can happen at any age…

Artists who claimed success later in life

It’s worth recalling that Edward Hopper didn’t sell his first artwork — titled Sailing (1911) — until he was aged 31.

This relatively late arrival onto the scene seems to align with Hopper’s gradual artistic process, one in which he allowed his ideas to percolate and his pictures to evolve over time.

In a recorded interview in 1961, he described “a long process of gestation in the mind and arising emotion.” He would choose his subjects carefully, then in preparation for the painting, make numerous small sketches, some dealing with the picture as a whole and others focusing on inner details. “That’s how it comes about… eventually,” he said.

Hopper’s painting career was faltering in the beginning. Through his 20s and 30s, he displayed his work in group exhibitions at smaller venues across his home city of New York, always having to rely on his day job as an illustrator to pay his bills. “Illustration really didn’t interest me,” he later said. “I was forced into it by an effort to make some money, that’s all.”

Yet, bit by bit Hopper gained recognition. In 1923, the Brooklyn Museum purchased one of his watercolour works, The Mansard Roof, for its permanent collection for the sum of $100. A year later, aged 42, he held his first solo exhibition and sold all of the watercolour paintings on display. Shortly after, resolving to become an artist, he gave up his illustration job and devoted himself to painting full-time.

His most famous work, Nighthawks, wasn’t painted until he was aged 60.

And then there is the French Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne, who painted his entire adult life yet was widely considered a failed painter in his 40s.

He even became the inspiration for the character of the defeated painter in his friend Émile Zola’s 1885 novel L’œuvre, (often translated in English as “The Masterpiece”). In the novel, the painter is depicted as falling into depression after he continually fails to paint his masterwork.

However, in real life Cézanne did eventually find his groove, achieving professional success in his 50s and 60s. After his first solo show with dealer Ambroise Vollard when he was 56, Cézanne went on to be one of the most influential artists of the last 200 years.

Then there’s the Japanese printmaker Katsushika Hokusai, who made one of the most recognisable images in the world at an age when most people have retired.

Great Wave off Kanagawa is a woodblock print made by Hokusai sometime around 1830.

Hokusai was born in 1760 in the city of Edo, today’s Tokyo. He spent his whole life making prints and paintings and is thought to have produced over 30,000 paintings, sketches and woodblock prints during his lifetime.

Hokusai was in his early 70s when he created Great Wave off Kanagawa. He later claimed that nothing he produced before the age of 70 was of very much value. For Hokusai, with age came wisdom, as he wryly expressed:

“And so, at eighty-six I shall progress further; at ninety I shall even further penetrate their secret meaning, and by one hundred I shall perhaps truly have reached the level of the marvellous and divine. When I am one hundred and ten, each dot, each line will possess a life of its own.”

(Introduction to series “One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji”, 1834)

Finding creative fruition in full maturity

In more recent times, the Cuban-born geometric painter Carmen Herrera only began finding recognition for her art at age 89.

Long before her eventual breakthrough, Herrera relocated from Havana to New York City with her husband, where she immersed herself in the city’s vibrant art scene, studying painting and printmaking.

A subsequent extended stay in Paris exposed her to the striking colours and geometric forms of Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich, both of whom profoundly influenced the evolution of her mature style. By the late 1960s, she had even begun to experiment with sculptural works that took her geometric paintings into three-dimensional space.

She continued to make artworks despite receiving little recognition for her achievements.

Her first public painting sale only came in 2004 when she was approaching 90 years old.

In a remarkable rise to prominence, the Cuban-born artist then had a major retrospective in 2016 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. She died in 2022, reaching the impressive age of 106, and leaving behind a fine body of avant-garde art.

Meanwhile, Luchita Hurtado offers more proof that creative success has no relation to age.

Having been painting for 70 years, Hurtado’s public recognition only really began when she was included in the 2018 Hammer Biennial exhibition in Los Angeles.

A year later, she had her first solo show in a public gallery at London’s Serpentine. She was 98 at the time.

Born in 1920, Hurtado emigrated from Venezuela to New York with her mother aged eight, travelling by boat via Puerto Rico. She later travelled extensively in Mexico, before settling permanently in Santa Monica, California, in 1951.

Though she painted most of her life, she rarely exhibited her work. Her art was often made not in a studio but on the kitchen table, and her painting hours coincided with children’s bedtimes.

The arc of Hurtado’s output took a meaningful shift at the beginning of the 1970s when she entered a more surrealist mode of representation. Her figures stand above floors and rugs crisscrossed with zigzags, diamonds, stripes, and chevrons of Latin weavings.

Despite being acknowledged for the originality of her art only in her later years, she denied any feelings of resentment, saying “I don’t feel anger, I really don’t. I feel, you know: How stupid of them.”

Final thoughts

Picasso once said: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

The difficulty with adulthood is that we are expected to take on so many responsibilities that we end up thinking about our lives in more and more practical terms. Finding a job, earning a living, establishing stability and protecting our loved ones.

In the face of all these duties, seeking to lead a creative life — or even just taking an hour or two out of your normal routines in order to write or paint — can feel like a challenge.

However, dedicating time to creativity, no matter how brief, helps maintain perseverance. Consistent practice strengthens and nurtures your creative instincts. So, never give up.

And remember, it’s never too late to find creative success.

Originally published on medium.

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